


The moon shifts phases so awfully slowly without you.

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Femslash February 2014 [8]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Wizards, F/F, Femslash, Femslash Challenge 2014, Femslash February, Mild Smut, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a month at the full moon, the Yellow Emperor's astral retainer reaffirms his immortality. And to do so, she must enter the domain of the Amaranth Witch and do battle with She of the Rose Eyes. Well, battle of a certain kind, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The moon shifts phases so awfully slowly without you.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February. Prompt O4 on my bingo card, "Wizards AU".
> 
> Lan Fan is a transwoman per my headcanons. Warning that this may be potentially be read as dubcon given the circumstances.
> 
> Damn, I love really undefined AUs.

As he wrote upon the scroll in exceedingly careful calligraphy, mindful that a single mistake could cost his seat of power or his breath of life, gouges of scarlet carved into the flesh on the back of his hand. His mouth quivered. His astral retainer stepped forward, as if to alleviate his pain from her movement, but he shook his head. Droplets of blood spotted the parchment. The characters of his name bled colour into the white before suddenly shimmering gold. The Yellow Emperor rolled up the scroll, slid it into its glass case, and capped either end with a rosy marker. Standing, his sleeves extending to the floor in rippling rivers of prosperity representing the Dragon’s Tail and the Dragon’s Tongue that had born his nation from its ancient birth an eternity ago, he offered the scroll to his astral retainer. She accepted his soul in her blackened hand. Her stiff fingers curled about the glass with a series of painful clicks. “Lan Fan,” whispered the Yellow Emperor, “be careful.”

She flexed her cursed arm. Her sinews flowed beneath the surface of her skin as though a bed of maggots crawled within her limb, eating her from the inside out. “This one will be fine, my lord.”

“I know it gets harder every time.” The Yellow Emperor bowed to her. She bowed lower, as none could stand above the Yellow Emperor, and he frowned faintly. “I should never have asked you to be my retainer. I’m so sorry, Lan Fan.”

“This one is proud to serve my lord.” His astral retainer indicated the door with a flick of the pupils. “Is this one dismissed, my lord?”

“Don’t die.” She stirred no muscle. “Yes, Lan Fan, you are dismissed.”

She melted into shadow cool and dark, and the Yellow Emperor wrapped his bleeding hand in linen gold as his name upon the scroll.

 

The moment Lan Fan entered the Witch’s domain, she _knew_. Tiny trees nestled upon rocks that by comparison seemed akin to mountains; she waded through blades of grass towering a metre above her head. A dragonfly the length of her arm skimmed over a watering hole beside a water buffalo the size of a housecat. The bluish sky swirled with amaranth clouds of a perpetual sunrise. Or a perpetual sunset, she thought, shuddering. The Witch’s hut had been crafted in the shape of a panda bear looming over the glade, its pronounced teeth transforming the gentle herbivore into a ravenous beast readying its terrible jaws to devour her whole. Striding forward through the gaping maw, the astral retainer surrendered herself to the belly of the beast.

Beyond racks of multicoloured daggers tipped in pink and drying herbs that cast shadows of tortured forms, she found the Witch speaking tongues to a pair of nightingales as large as warhorses and as vibrantly plumed as the Yellow Emperor, dressed in rustling silks that murmured around her to give the illusion that she floated above the ground, or perhaps she _did_ float. The nightingales sang at the astral retainer’s approach. The Witch’s scarlet-rose irises gleamed, and Lan Fan’s blackened arm rippled disturbingly, her fingers writhing around the glass. Chirping in the astral retainer’s direction, the Witch cleared her throat and continued in Xingese: “Ah, my Lan Fan. What would I do without my bowl of cold rice? After all, my half-brother’s people live on rice. As do I. How is the hand? Have my charms kept the curse at bay? This, my Lan Fan, is what you get for tangling with demons of sin to become an astral retainer. Still, selfishly enough, I’m glad ‘twas you and not some poor man forced, as previous Rainbow Emperors have done. Urch. I might not _like_ Ling all that much, but he’s a good Emperor for a Phoenix Heir.”

After slotting the soul scroll into the receptacle of the beak of a phoenix statuette, Lan Fan extended her cursed limb. The Witch slit her arm open with a small blade and in a silvery bowl caught the thick black slime that oozed from the tattered paper-like edges of the wound. She sniffed the concoction of demons’ entrails, bubbling and churning by itself. “Ah! Perfect. Fresh, just as I like it. Your arm should be fine, and the purification ceremony shall ease the pain for another three weeks at the least.” The astral retainer dipped her head gratefully, respectfully. “Now, come, my Lan Fan, for I had almost forgotten of the full moon. Ling needs his immortality. And _I_ need to be satiated, heheh.”

Lan Fan swallowed. The apple at her throat bobbed painfully, while the heavy incense had begun to throb at the base of her skull. “O-of course.”

“If you’ll strip.” The Witch leered, though not unkindly. “So that I may set your astral projection _free_ of its physical bonds within that beautiful body of yours.”

Turning away to hide the colour in her cheeks, the astral retainer removed her layers of protective armour and undergarments, folding them neatly and placing them upon the floor in easy-to-don-again stacks. For a moment she hesitated over the linen binding her breasts, as she always had. Then she unwrapped the bandages as well to reveal a chest flat as a man’s. When she returned her gaze to the middle of the clearing, now free of the nightingales, the Witch stood in the midst of a bloody pool of pink silk. Dark skin flushed through with shimmering rose, as if a twisted plant had grown from a seed within her heart and spread its petals just below her flesh. She stepped from them, nude but for tiny amaranth bells pierced into her flesh: A circle about her stomach and chest, inscribed with the five-pointed star of the elemental quintet, complemented by five lines of _chi_ escaping down her limbs to the backs of her hands and the tops of her feet and up her neck, through the trail of bare scalp between her tautly pulled braids, and to her forehead. The Witch nodded towards the centre of the room. She touched her palms together, softly, and abruptly the ground exploded into an identical array glowing a brilliant rose. “Lie down, my Lan Fan.”

Lan Fan spread herself upon the amaranth pulse, her chest, her heart, her astral projection at the crossroads of the elements, her neck and head in line with one branch, her limbs splayed across the other four. “Ah, my Lan Fan, my most beautiful woman in all of Xing and the astral plane combined.” The bells crisscrossing the Witch’s physical representation tinkled euphoniously. The rose-eyed woman knelt between the astral retainer’s thighs, smiled at the growing manifestation of her unbidden arousal, and stretched her gorgeously rosy-tinted form luxuriously over Lan Fan’s body. When she impaled upon the astral retainer’s heat, Lan Fan shuddered at the slick, tight wetness around her. She rode slowly at first, then gradually increased her speed, until the bells screamed out a melody of perfect pleasure-pain that rattled in Lan Fan’s mind and rendered her physical form asunder. As the Witch kissed her soul from her lips, her astral projection coiled into a phoenix, black instead of gold, and the Witch’s projection, a panda pink as dawn, clasped the glass case tightly in her paws. “My Lan Fan,” she purred, uncapping the glass. “ _My_ Lan Fan.” The leaf of the Yellow Emperor’s soul floated, bubble-like, into the air. Pursing her lips, the Witch blew the saffron sphere into the obsidian bird’s breast, and she blossomed gold.

An incantation. A burst of agony. A wash of joy. A hint, perhaps, of love.

They surfaced together, clinging to one another, pants heavy, eyes bright. “My Lan Fan.”

“My May. If this one may call my May that.”

The Witch beamed. “Always, my Lan Fan. Do come visit. The moon shifts phases so _awfully_ slowly without you.”

 

The Yellow Emperor welcomed his astral retainer into his private chambers, assuring her that his immortality had returned by pricking his finger upon the blade of her kunai. His blood vanished along with the wound, skin whole and clean and new. “How is your arm, Lan Fan?”

“This one’s arm is better, my lord.”

He studied her. His astral retainer replaced the capped glass case into the receptacle of the beak of an identical phoenix statuette. “How is the Witch?”

“She is the Witch, my lord,” she answered simply. “As she has always been.”

A faint frown. Or perhaps, in another light, a slight smile. “I see.” Standing, his sleeves extending to the floor in rippling rivers of prosperity representing the Dragon’s Tail and the Dragon’s Tongue that had born his nation from its ancient birth an eternity ago, he embraced his astral retainer. “Thank you, Lan Fan.”

She bowed at the waist. “Of course, my lord.”


End file.
